Everyday Systems

Okay, so this morning I got up early enough to eat a big bowl of cereal before class. Unfortunately, breakfast has worn off, and I'm hungry again. This wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm starting to get a bad headache. Does anybody have any advice on how to get by until lunch and avoid headaches (which I'm very prone to getting) without snacking? I'd also like to add that I don't drink milk because it upsets my stomach, so that's not an option.

For breakfast I use Reinhard's recommended oatmeal "Old Wessex Scottish style oats," (1 scoop) mixed with a protein shake (1 scoop), at circa 7:00 AM, and although I eat lunch (to maintain the habit), with this breakfast I can be good until dinner time.

Protein is probably the answer. Try some eggs, Greek yogurt (if you can have that), breakfast sausage, or other protein foods to have along with your bowl of cereal.

I'd start by giving yourself a powerful breakfast. As Jethro mentions, I'm a big fan of oatmeal (though I eat it more frequently for lunch). I'm also fond of "mestemacher" style black bread (packs a wallop). It's great with egg (any style) on top if you want to supplement the slow burning fiber blast with some serious protein.

If you find you still can't make it through to lunch, allow yourself some fruit juice, either straight in small quantities, or cut with water or seltzer.

If that STILL doesn't work, consider adding a "2nd breakfast" mini-meal (just don't call it a "snack!"). You could add some constraints like "mini-meal can only consist of fresh fruit or vegetable" if you like.

In any case, you have a lot of options. Even if vanilla no-s doesn't do the trick for you by itself, it's a great foundation to build on.

Reinhard

Thank you so much for the advice, everyone. I agree that protein is key. I'd thought that I'd chosen a good cereal-muesli. It has nuts, oats, and dried fruit. I thought that would tide me over, but I guess I was wrong.

Reinhard, do you know of any stores that sell mestemacher bread? I haven't been able to find it.

You can get large quantities of it through amazon (not a bad deal, actually, and it keeps forever unopened).

Around here, whole foods carries it. Trader Joe's has their own version which is cheaper and about as good. I'm pretty sure I've seen it in the bigger star market/shaws as well.

Walmart has it online, so possibly in stores as well.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mestemacher-T ... 2/17182623

Reinhard

Another perhaps non-obvious mestemacher combination that tastes great: I like it better than bagels for lox and cream cheese. Obviously not "health food," but healthier (and I think even tastier) than the more typical alternative.

ruamgirl wrote:... I don't drink milk because it upsets my stomach, so that's not an option.

I also react that way to cold milk, but I don't have any trouble when I heat it up for hot chocolate. When I started No S, the hunger pangs were pretty strong, and hot chocolate was a lifesaver. But No S has influenced my appetite in a positive way (as Reinhard predicted), and I am rarely hungry now between meals.

I know that for me, a bowl of cereal does NOT hold me over and usually leads to a drop in my blood sugar within an hour or so of eating it. I am totally a protein-type and need high quality protein to keep my blood sugar even. That's why my stint at being vegetarian/vegan didn't last long--the headaches did me in almost immediately!

I second bigger breakfasts. but also other beverages? Soymilk? Nut milk? I'm 31 months in. My breakfasts have gotten smaller but I almost always have a "milk" something between breakfast around 6 a.m. and lunch at 12:30. (That's eating around work schedule.) If I decide to give up coffee with milk, I may go back to bigger breakfasts and try to power through. Love the options!

I'm not much of a breakfast eater, but when I do eat breakfast, cereal is never a part of it. The one exception is that I make my own granola and occasionally I'll have that with Greek yogurt and fruit.

My usual breakfast is whole grain toast with butter and some kind of seasonal fruit (generally citrus in the winter and berries in the summer). If I'm especially hungry I'll add an egg, usually cooked in butter or, more recently, lard.

While many folks have suggested adding protein, I think fat is important, too.

just a suggestion or a Mod: I use intermittent fasting along with No S (along with paleo-ish eating which is great for my blood sugar).

I eat "breakfast" at 10am, "lunch" at 2pm and dinner at 6pm. With this schedule I am not hungry between meals at all. Fasting from 7pm til 10am is so very easy once you are used to it.

Perhaps at first waiting til 10 to eat was a little difficult, but I am not very hungry in the mornings anyhow. Coffee and water and tea carry me thru til my meal. The 16 hrs between dinner and breakfast is beneficial to me in so many ways.

Just a thought for those who struggle with the hours between meals.

I wanted to vote for protein myself. I am weird because oatmeal doesn't fill me up but two eggs scrambled with veggies is my standard breakfast.

About the Mastmacher bread, I fing it in independent groceries not always in the bread section but sometimes in the Eastern European section. I would suggest trying to find it at a store before purchasing in bulk. It has a very strong distinct flavor and texture. I love it toasted with butter, or cheese but it's not for everyone.

My policy is to avoid oatmeal at b-fast like the plague. Leaves me starving and miserable by 10:30.
For the past few weeks I've been having a hardboiled eggs (2 ) and avocado sandwich in the morning and have felt fine and pleasantly hungry at lunch time!

yep, protien is the key. I was doing some reading around on blogsphere the last several days on this sort of stuff...

Here's some really interesting reading
http://www.gnolls.org/1794/why-snacking ... -just-fat/

Basically, if I understand it correctly the idea is that protien somehow links in with the carbs so it makes them last longer... carbs by themselves just enter body and exit quickly, leaving a heck of a lot of sugar in the process that causes you to gain a lot of fat since the body can't burn it fast enough... the protien makes the body have time to gnaw on the carbs and make them last til next meal....

Basic rule of thumb I'm going to start is trying to eat about 20% of every meal as some sort of protien. For breakfast if I don't have time to cook eggs, a good ol handful of deli meat should do the job nicely.

The 20% rule is a good way to go since you NEED the carbs as a form of energy. Basic rule of thumb on average people is that guys need 45-55 carbs per meal and ladies need about 40-45 or so... that's the rule of thumb given by ADA (learned a lot about that sort of stuff when I became diabetic and had to talk with some dieticians). The protien should not do much with increasing blood sugar level, but it acts as a way for the carbs that do do that to get released in to bloodstream slower, which is a good thing if you are trying to get healthy and do the No S diet....

You don't want to overdo the protien though since you do need those carbs still. If you just eat nothing but protien at a meal you are asking for trouble since there's not many carbs in stuff like meat or eggs... there's fat, but not a lot of carbs. Your body needs the carbs or else you'll get low sugar levels, which will make you irratable, cranky, and in some cases if you are near diabetic or diabetic, could actually cause you to go in to a coma!!!

That's why I think 20% rule, or the 2 slices of thinly sliced ham or a half a handful of deli turkey, is the way to go.

Advantage to counting carbs is it controls sugar and the numbers are a lot easier to keep track of than calories since there's less of them. Veggies like green beans, etc. are super low carb...about 5 per serving I think. Meats, and cheeses are low carb (but milk is not - 8 oz glass of milk is about 10 carbs or so. The process that makes chees out of the milk removes the carbs from it)... Fruit is fairly high carb. I think a banana is around 30 or so. Breads and grain stuff are usually fairly high carb. That's why a good meal for lunch or supper is typically a deli meat sandwhich a little fruit and a veggie... The bread and fruit add up the carbs, the veggie and meat don't add a lot to that. The meat has the protien to help all those carbs last a while.

Just to prove that scientists can see the same thing in different ways:

The process of turning sugars into fats is known as de novo lipogenesis. Some animals, such as pigs and cows, can efficiently convert the low-energy, inexpensive carbohydrates found in grains and grasses into calorie-dense fats. This metabolic efficiency makes pigs and cows ideal “food animals.†Bees also perform de novo lipogenesis; converting honey (simple carbohydrates) into wax (fats). However, human beings are very inefficient at this process and as a result de novo lipogenesis does not occur under usual living conditions in people. When, during extreme conditions, de novo lipogenesis does occur the metabolic cost is about 30% of the calories consumed—a very wasteful process.

Under experimental laboratory conditions overfeeding of large amounts of simple sugars to subjects will result in a little bit of de novo lipogenesis. For example, trim and obese women were overfed 50% more total calories than they usually ate in a day, along with an extra 3.5 ounces (135 grams) of refined sugar. From this overfeeding the women produced less than 4 grams (36 calories) of fat daily, which means a person would have to be overfed by this amount of extra calories and sugar every day for nearly 4 months in order to gain one extra pound of body fat. Obviously, even overeating substantial quantities of refined and processed carbohydrates is a relatively unimportant source of body fat.